Repent at Leisure
The Observer’s Nicole Mowbray reveals the hitherto-unguessed fact that poor fashion choices can have practical consequences:
After seven unsuccessful job interviews, 24-year-old Luke Clark began to think something other than his CV was playing havoc with his job prospects. Potential employers didn’t seem to like the 4cm “flesh tunnel” holes he had in each ear as much as he did. Clark had begun stretching his lobes at university several years earlier, and the problem was that when he took the plugs out his stretched earlobes looked terrible. Now one of the fastest-growing cosmetic procedures in the UK is repairing stretched earlobes.
Several readers of said paper are, however, quite upset. Specifically, they’re upset that not all employers are impressed, either by the Urban Bush Warrior look or by self-inflicted comedy lobes with large, baggy holes in them:
It’s just a bigger hole than what society has considered to be “standard” and judging someone’s ability to do a job based on their outward appearance is incredibly ignorant… If there wasn’t such a pointlessly negative view on stretched ears, people like teachers and professional golf players wouldn’t have to get them sewn up.
Possibly a contender for our series of classic sentences.
And this chap here, he’s upset too:
Until you know that person, you have no right to criticise, judge or alter the life chances for them. Those who make decisions about the future of others based only on appearance, are themselves the shallowest of people, and do not deserve to have such a position of influence.
You see, he should be free to deform his anatomy into eye-catchingly unattractive shapes, thereby announcing his heroic radicalism and disdain for bourgeois norms, entirely without consequence. But you mustn’t be free to run your business without him, regardless of whatever message he’s chosen to send via the medium of disfigured earlobes. No bad decision that he makes must ever “alter his life chances” because… well, obviously, it’s all your fault.
And so we’re expected to believe that Mr Clark, who chose to make a bold statement by deliberately stretching and deforming his earlobes – to the extent that a jar of instant coffee could almost fit through the holes – is somehow being wronged, indeed oppressed, when, during job interviews, potential employers notice – and find inappropriate – the bold statement he’s chosen to make. Having decided at university to scandalise the less daring whenever in public, he now seems surprised when those same less daring people make choices of their own, i.e., not to hire him. But aren’t their raised eyebrows and looks of disgust what he wanted all along?
Friday Night Smoke – as an appearance-driven wanker, I am offended at your suggestion that we all wear shiny suits.
What is this, the 90’s? You must be thinking of the gel-haired spivs who work in recruitment consultancy. They’re just entry-level appearance-driven wankers. Some of us have style.
Minnow – I do get the impression tat some people on here think ‘you are a girl’ is a mortal insult
Not as mortal as saying “you smell of wee!”
I’m sure you can spot the culprits SVH.
Not good enough. You seem to be extremely fond of making all kind of sweeping assertions on all kinds of subject matter without ever being able to back up those assertions with hard facts.
Elision- thy name is “minnow”.
Slipped up there, Minnow
‘You are a girl’ are your words, I think. Round here it’s woman & female.
Still can’t detect any insults although I would love to have the ability to mortally insult somebody (just in case they come at me with a knife).
You mean ‘not religious’ in the sense that Isis is non-religious.
I mean in the sense that neither Torquemada nor Isabella were interested in the spiritual well-being of the population. They were purging political enemies, not saving souls.
Religion being conflated with government, the political loyalties also broke along religious lines.
Mostly.
Well, and then those Jews, whom nobody can trust, amiright?
David Gillies | October 20, 2014 at 23:00: But why should it be a matter of law? Why is bigotry not merely immoral, but illegal?
In the U.S., at least, because racial discrimination in employment and public accommodations was effectively universal in a large part of the country, enforced by a deeply entrenched social code backed up by violence with government approval.
The force of law is a crude and brutal weapon, and it is highly inappropriate for personal interactions. But defeating a deep, broad, intractable prospiracy is very hard without powerful weapons. “Hard caes make bad law.”
“I’m sure you can spot the culprits SVH.”
Not all of us are such skilled witch-finders as you are, Inquisitor.
“Not good enough. You seem to be extremely fond of making all kind of sweeping assertions”
I don’t think ‘I get the impression …’ really qualifies as a sweeping assertion.
“I mean in the sense that neither Torquemada nor Isabella were interested in the spiritual well-being of the population. They were purging political enemies, not saving souls.”
Yes, because the Jews were a real political threat to the Reyes Catolicos.
I don’t think ‘I get the impression …’ really qualifies as a sweeping assertion.
When you don’t come up with names it does.
An impression is an impression.
An impression is an impression.
And bullshit is bullshit.
“And bullshit is bullshit.”
And neither is a ‘sweeping assertion’.
I’m glad David Gillies mentioned the morality/legality thing over discrimination. I remember thinking, when the Race Relations Act first came about : “Well, damn me, they’re legislating for civilised behaviour.
Yes, because the Jews were a real political threat to the Reyes Catolicos.
Of course they were.
They weren’t CATHOLIC (political entity), so they weren’t under the control of the Church. They actually thought they had access to God without the intermediacy of a priest. The Reyes Católicos couldn’t send a bishop after the miscreants to threaten them with hell and damnation if they didn’t swear undying fealty to F&I and to the Pope.
But mostly to F&I.
And so, unexpectedly, they found themselves at the business end of Torquemada’s tender care.
You Europeans have always been suspicious of Jews precisely because they steadfastly held themselves apart from belonging to the State Religion. Which meant they weren’t wholly owned by the state.
And we can’t have that.
Really, the Kings of Spain had more persuasive means at their disposal than a finger wagging from the Bishop, and they were not slow to use them. In fact, it was loyalty to the Vatican that presented the King with a real threat to his power and challenge to state authority. See Thomas a-Beckett or the English Reformation. The only reason to persecute the Jews – who had no loyalty to any foreign power, were small in number and economically productive – was religious mania (and the chance to plunder them, of course, nothing is ever pure) but religious mania was then and always has been enough. Europeans have always been suspicious of the Jews and been steadfast in keeping them separate from the state because Europeans have always been prone to bouts of religious or other ideological zealotry of the sort that Isis are now making their own.
I’m sure you can spot the culprits SVH.
Posted by: Minnow
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Actus, is that you?
As an employer I’ve always found self-mutilation a quick tell that speaks volumes about the individual.
I remember when rebels were actually proud and intellectually consistent in their non-conformity.
If you want to be free to reject and disapprove of social constraints, you must also accept that others are free to reject and disagree with your decisions and not associate with you.
One is free to do body mods and others are free to not hire one because one appears to be an idiot with an inability to fathom long and short term consequences of one’s own actions. When it comes to hiring for a job, a lot of eployers see extreme body modding as a sign of poor decision making skills and a lack of foresight. And it appears they are correct in most cases.
Funny the non-conformists are now demanding that others conform to their own ideas when it comes to getting hired.
If you seek to upset and shock the “squares” with your body mod appearance, why are you surprised that they are actually shocked and upset by your appearance and don’t hire you? Shouldn’t you be happy that your decision to look like a freak is working?
If you seek to upset and shock the “squares” with your body mod appearance, why are you surprised that they are actually shocked and upset by your appearance and don’t hire you? Shouldn’t you be happy that your decision to look like a freak is working?
Quite. But the people quoted above seem to want it both ways.